The Verma Committee: police reform in india

The Delhi 2012 gangrape and murder sparked off spontaneous protests across the country.
The Verma Committee, set up thereafter, recommended-

• Police reforms
• Statutory procedures for managing sexual offence cases, including Rape Crisis Cells
• Criminalisation of marital rape
• Disqualification of politicians with criminal records
• Repeal of laws like AFSPA
• Educational reforms including education of adults
• Gender-free socialisation, and sexuality education

The SC (responding to a PIL pursuing justice for CSA victims, particularly an eight-month-old raped by her 28-year old cousin Delhi, January 2018) has issued directives that-

• Police chiefs should constitute Special Task Forces to investigate POCSO cases.
• High courts must ensure fast-track trials by designated Special Courts and ensure a “child-friendly atmosphere”.

POCSO requires that police, doctors, judges, lawyers and prosecutors be educated to understand, and deliver justice to, child survivors. Survivors require justice and rehabilitation. Trauma may last forever.

Recent step taken by government:

Ordinance providing for death penalty for those convicted of raping 12-year odds has been recently approved by Union cabinet.

It is though misconceived. It fails to understand the social foundations of rape and undermines human rights and women’s movement struggles for a violence-free world.

Way forword:

Children and women ought to come first, in every decision, plan and policy, in families, boardrooms, and development paradigms. The last child has to become our first concern. Entrenched hierarchies must be overturned.

We need to intervene to ensure respect for girl child’s basic rights, fulfilment of basic needs, socialisation and education that builds self-confidence and skills for self-assertion. She should have an inalienable right to safety, requiring systematic inputs by schools, communities, health services, police, and law.